My phone showed a new voicemail at 3:17 AM on a Tuesday. I saw it when I woke up at 7, made coffee, and sat down to check my messages.
The voicemail was from my father.
My father died two years ago. His number was disconnected months after. I have not deleted his contact from my phone — I know I should, I haven't — and his name, his photo that I took on his birthday five years ago, appeared in the notification the same as always.
I sat with the phone for a long time.
Then I listened.
The first thing was static — twenty, thirty seconds of it, the specific slightly-warm static of an old phone connection, not digital static. Then my father's voice.
He sounded like himself. Not distorted, not wrong in the ways that would let you explain it away. Like himself in the mornings, slightly rough, before he'd been awake long. He said my name. Then he said he didn't have long to talk.
He said he'd been trying to reach me for a while and this was the only way he'd found that worked. He said I shouldn't worry about him, he was okay, it was different but okay. He said there were things he wanted to tell me and he was going to try to say the most important ones because he didn't know if this would work again.
He told me he was proud of me. He said some specific things about my life that he couldn't have known because they happened after he died.
Then he said: "There's something near your building. I can see it from here. I don't know what it is but it's been near your building for a few weeks. I don't want to scare you but I want you to be careful. Don't go out late. Don't be outside alone at night."
Then static. Then nothing.
I've listened to it eleven times. It's still there in my voicemail, not expired, playable.
I haven't gone out after dark since Tuesday.
I don't know if I believe what I heard. I don't know what believing it would mean.
But my father, in life, was not a person who said things without reason.